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Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia showcased at TIFF Bell Lightbox

Maybe it’s his propensity for over-the-top scenes of violence and perversity. Or it could be his ruthlessly acerbic take on religious and political matters that usually receive a far gentler kind of treatment. Or perhaps it’s because he can’t resist the temptation to populate the screen with killers, thieves, witches and – worst of all — spectacularly deranged circus clowns.

Whatever the reason, it’s a crime that the movies of Álex de la Iglesia aren’t better known in North America. Since the early 1990s, the Spanish filmmaker has directed a bounty of wild, inventive, genre-busting features, many of which received enthusiastic receptions at festivals like TIFF, where his most recent film Witching and Bitching won second place for the Midnight Madness audience award in 2013. Yet few titles attracted the wider attention they deserved beyond de la Iglesia’s hardy cult of devotees.

A new retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox will hopefully boost his profile, at least among Toronto’s more adventurous-minded moviegoers. Curated by producer and Twitchfilm.com founder Todd Brown, Alex de la Iglesia: Dancing with the Devil is made up of the director’s 10 features since his 1995 sophomore effort The Day of the Beast, which launches the series on Jan. 30.

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His international breakthrough, this eagerly profane horror comedy remains a signature work and a perennial fan fave despite its longtime unavailability on DVD. Álex Angulo stars as a priest who – according to the secret message he’s decoded in the Book of Revelations – believes that the Antichrist will be born on Christmas Eve in Madrid, thereby ushering in the end of days. While the premise might’ve yielded a more conventional sort of apocalyptic thriller in other hands, de la Iglesia sees it as a means of skewering church and state alike.

Best of all are the scenes in which the priest does his damnedest to commit as many sins as possible and sell his soul in the hopes of fooling the devil into revealing his whereabouts.

Nor is there any lack of antisocial behaviour in A Ferpect Crime (sic), a 2004 black comedy that’s another highlight of the series. After a workplace rivalry culminates in murder, a studly department-store salesman is blackmailed into marrying a gawky female co-worker. In the process, de la Iglesia’s film shifts from a hilarious parable about ambition into a portrait of matrimonial hostility that’s dark and sly enough to have impressed even Hitchcock. (A Ferpect Crime screens March 3.)

The showbiz satire Dying of Laughter and the spaghetti-western tribute 800 Bullets provide further evidence of the anarchic sensibility and stylistic diversity that marks the director’s Spanish-language output. Unfortunately, his two efforts in English lack the same vitality, which may be the biggest reason for his relatively low profile beyond his homeland and the international festival circuit.

Like David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, his 1997 feature Perdita Durango was adapted from a seamy crime novel by Barry Gifford and stars Javier Bardem and Rosie Perez as lovers with a shared penchant for crime, rape and murder. Even more lurid than Lynch’s film, yet largely without its leavening humour, Perdita Durango invites viewers to revel in the sadism of its protagonists. No wonder it was only released with significant cuts in many territories and dumped straight to video in North America under the title of Dance with the Devil. (Lightbox presents the uncut Spanish release version on Feb. 7.)

A 2008 adaptation of a mathematically themed mystery novel by Argentine author Guillermo Martinez starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt, The Oxford Murders is an admirably brainy sort of thriller but with its very uncharacteristic air of tasteful restraint, it’s also the only one of de la Iglesia’s movies that could be accused of being dull. (It plays Feb. 8.)

There’s no such problem with The Last Circus, a Spanish-language effort that won de la Iglesia the best director prize at the Venice film festival in 2011 – it closes the Lightbox series on March 28.

Only de la Iglesia could think of dressing up a political allegory about General Franco’s dictatorship as a sex-and-violence-laden saga of rival circus clowns. Foul-mouthed, obscene and thoroughly unhinged, de la Iglesia’s film becomes ever grotesque before reaching its climactic battle at the Valley of the Fallen, the gargantuan monument on the outskirts of Madrid that remains a controversial symbol of the Franco era.

As the Lightbox retro amply demonstrates, de la Iglesia loves nothing more than delivering such provocations. Even moviegoers who don’t speak a word of Spanish have to admire his cojones.

Alex de la Iglesia: Dancing with the Devil runs Jan. 30 to March 28 at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

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